Ever since the dramatic 2012 downfall of the colorful Chongqing party leader Bo Xilai, the Western press has been fascinated with China’s “princeling” plutocrats and the Central Government’s efforts to restrain them. No wonder: the battle is China’s basic political division, pitting the bureaucratic and ideological power of the Beijing Central government against the economic power of Southern Chinese entrepreneurs centered around Shanghai. Under former Shanghai mayor Jiang Zemin, China opened rapidly to the foreign investment that spurred decades of florid economic expansion… and sowed the seeds of China’s major political problems, corruption, inequality and environmental ruin. The downfall of Bo Xilai, a protege of Jiang Zemin’s Shanghai clique and member of its successor “Princeling” clique, was taken as a sign that Xi Jinping is serious about continuing Hu Jintao’s campaign against the ill-gotten gains of the Shanghai boom… a signal that is growing louder as the investigations widen.

Why the ten-cent lecture on Chinese politics? Shanghai’s automotive star rose alongside Jiang Zemin’s, and the city with which the he is synonymous has become one of China’s biggest automotive players and partner to the two biggest foreign presences in China, Volkswagen and GM. If Xi Jinping’s reform movement continues to target Shanghai and its Princelings, and especially if the investigations draw closer to Zemin himself, automakers could find themselves on awkward ground. Caught between the guanxi (connections) culture of the world’s new largest market for cars and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of what is still the most profitable market for cars, automakers with Shanghai exposure have reason for concern.